Skin tones: how to get it right?

[pascalerodot]

Most of the skin tones on my pics have a red cast that I'm having a

hard time fixing up. Does anyone have a "trick" to fix skin tones?

In advance, thank you.

[emre]

Equipment, workflow, lighting, sample picture?

[howard_owen]

Working in Photoshop, make sure the info palette is open and giving CMYK readouts (even if you are working in RGB). Some things are just easier to correct when the values are expressed in CMYK and skin tones fall into that category. Here is an article I archived 5 years ago:

 

Matching skin tones by Kevin Breckenridge

 

There is no magic formula or CMYK breakdown, but here are some general rules that have worked for me over the years.

 

First let me state the obvious, every person has a unique skin tone color, even within specific ethnic groups the variety is limitless. Unfortunately CMYK, and offset printing only allows us a fraction of choices, and equally unfair you are often forced to stereotype people with specific CMYK break downs to trigger those every present memory colors hard wired in our brains.

 

Take a look around the room, Caucasian, Asian, African American, Hispanic, East Indian, and Native American, all in reality don't have nearly the saturation of color we see in photographs and publications. So we have to cheat a little to give these images some punch, after all who wants a bunch of pasty smiling people on the cover of their magazine anyway!

 

A good rule of thumb for most skin tones is to have the magenta trail the yellow and the cyan trail the magenta, very little black even in African American people. Black should only serve to add density to a prominent shadow areas, if you have too much it will neutralize what color you have when it hits the press, those pressman always run up the Black so the text looks sharp.

 

Here come the stereotypical portion of color correcting skin tones:

 

When I set up a scan for Caucasian people the Magenta trails the Yellow slightly and the Cyan in less than half of the Magenta.

 

If I sample a quarter tone area the CMYK might look like this: Cyan: 10 Magenta: 25 Yellow: 30 Black: 0

 

Asian people get a little more of everything plus a slightly higher separation between the Magenta and Yellow.

 

If I sample a quarter tone - mid tone area the CMYK might look like this: Cyan: 15 Magenta: 35 Yellow: 45 Black: 0

 

African Americans and people with darker skin tones get a slightly warmer treatment with enough cyan to keep it from going to red on press.

 

If I sample a mid tone area the CMYK might look like this: Cyan: 25 Magenta: 47 Yellow: 55 Black: 5

 

The big trick is to mix it up a bit, I don't shoot for these numbers every time, I like to ensure the scan prints as close to the original as possible after all that's what a scanner operator gets paid to do, but if I have some creative license or the photo has poor color and overexposed, I apply these guidelines. I also watch the 3 quarter tones and shadow areas very closely, making sure they don't over saturate and become dominant. The skin tones should have a consistent Hue regardless of the values from highlight to mid tone to shadow. Don't make the highlight Yellow, the mid tone Brown and the shadow Red.

[rdkirk]

I think Howard's information is basically the same as this:

 

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

 

One big question is "what is right?" Do you want accuracy or do you want "pleasing." Most people of all races are more pleased by a skin tone that contains a bit more yellow than true accuracy would show.

[micheleberti]

add a saturation adj layer, fill it with blak, double click on it and desaturete the reds lets say around 25/30%, click ok, paint with a white brush on the mask over the skin and then adjust the opacity layer

[pascalerodot]

Thx so much for ur answers guys!

Been following the smugmug's tutorial and it's very simple to follow.

Michelle, I'm sorry but, I have no idea how to do what u're suggesting. When I add a Hue/sat adj layer, how am I supposed to fill it in with black? U've lost me there.

I have the original pic and the re-worked one following the levels technic but it seems to me that he's now TOO YELLOW!

Any thoughts?

Oops! I wanted to add the pics but I don't know how! :(<div></div>

[pascalerodot]

Oh it's there! The pic that is! Cool! :) here's the original.<div></div>

[emre]

His skin looks fine to me. What do you want to do?

[van_camper]

While your at it fix the yellow teeth.

[BernardMiller]

Here's another method, courtesy of Bruce Fraser and David Blatner's <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321334116/sr=1-1/qid=1147212009/ref=sr_1_1/104-2000921-9404741?%5Fencoding=UTF8"> <I>Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2</i></A>:

<P>

Open the Hue/Saturation/Lightness adjustment box, and select the Reds channel from the pulldown menu. Move the Hue slider all the way over to the right, to +180. This will turn all the reds a rather sickening shade of blue or green, but that's okay; all you're doing is using this to help you see and select the skin tones you want to change.

<P>

Once you've done the above, adjust the colors selected by moving the slider right or left, and controlling the range of reds selected by moving the edges of the color range on the slider. With a little tweaking, you can usually just select the reddest parts of the skin tones without affecting anything else (and you could always go back and do a quick mask to make sure that you don't fool with anything in the background that you don't want to change).

<P>

Once you've managed to get it to where only the tones you want to fix are selected (<I>i.e.</I>, they are now blue), dial the Hue back to a more reasonable number: +6 or +7 usually works pretty well. Then bump up the Lightness and the Saturation to somewhere around +10 each, and hit OK. Where exactly you go with these numbers will depend on the image, and your personal taste; Fraser and Blatner recommend that you do a couple of small steps to get to where you want, although many images can be improved immensely by a one-shot adjustment.